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July 2011 Archives

July 1, 2011

A preview of Gmail's new look - Official Gmail Blog

StartingJUne 30, 2011, you'll see the "Preview" and "Preview (Dense)" themes in the Themes tab in Gmail Settings. Why two themes? Their new interface will eventually expand dynamically to accommodate different screen sizes and user preferences, but until then you can pick the information density that you prefer.

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July 5, 2011

With Salary Freeze, More New York Judges Are Leaving the Bench - NYTimes.com

Now, for the first time in memory, judges are leaving the bench in relatively large numbers -- not to retire, but to return to being practicing lawyers. Turnover in New York has increased rapidly in the last few years: nearly 1 in 10 judges are now leaving annually, a new study shows.

In New York State, at least a dozen have resigned and explicitly cited the pay. The latest is James M. McGuire, a judge on the intermediate state appeals court in Manhattan, who last week resigned his position at the white marble courthouse on Madison Avenue. His judicial salary was $144,000. He stepped down to be a partner at a law firm, Dechert LLP, where average partner pay is $1.4 million.

New York, as the state with what officials say is the longest judicial pay freeze, is the focus of a national debate about whether controversial rulings, court corruption and politicized judicial campaigns have so eroded support for courts that there is no constituency for increasing judges' pay. "I never expected to get rich as a judge, but I never expected to get poor either," said Robert A. Spolzino, who resigned as an appellate judge in Brooklyn two years ago to return to law practice.

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July 7, 2011

How to control a PC remotely with your iPad | How To - CNET

TeamViewer, a free iOS app, lets you remotely access your computer with your iPad. With the steps below, you can use it to send yourself a file or control a friend's computer for hands-on tech support. Your friend will see you moving the mouse and controlling the screen from your iPad, no matter where you are.

But if you're looking to actually stream media from your desktop to your iPad remotely, check out AirVideo. It's another free iOS app that lets you stream movies, saving you a lot of local storage space on your tablet.

The committee on Wednesday released its proposed fiscal year 2012 budget. Funding for the LSC would drop by about 26 percent, from $404 million this year to $300 million. In April, Congress reduced the group's fiscal year 2011 funding from the original $420 million allocation.

According to a statement released by the LSC, the cuts would roll back funding to its lowest level since 1999.

The bulk of LSC's funding is distributed to 136 nonprofit legal aid programs across the country. By the end of 2011, the group anticipates that at least 200 attorneys will have been laid off from Legal Services Corporation-funded programs across the country and many more will be laid off following the 2012 cuts.

The DEC made various documents available on July 1, 2011, including an Executive Summary of the revised draft GEIS. The full revised draft of the GEIS was made available yesterday. The documents now available include: atime lineregarding the GEIS, afact sheet regarding what DEC believes it has learned from Pennsylvania's experiences with hydraulic fracturing, apress release regarding the DEC's recommendations, a list of the members of a newHydraulic Fracturing Advisory Panel, aPowerPoint presentation from DEC's July 1, 2011 press conference, a simplediagramshowing how an intermediate casing would help protect ground water, and the full draft GEIS, which can be download in itsentiretyor in portions from aweb page that allows downloads by individual sectionsof the GEIS. Avideo of the DEC's July 1, 2011 press conference regarding its recommendations also is available.

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The iriver Story HD, which retails for $139.99, is slim and lightweight with a high-resolution e-ink screen and a QWERTY keyboard for easy searching. It includes over-the-air access to hundreds of thousands of Google eBooks for sale and more than 3 million for free. With the Story HD you can now browse, buy and read Google eBooks with your e-reader through Wi-Fi, rather than downloading and transferring them from computer to e-reader with a cord as you can already do with more than 80 compatible devices.

Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today signed a new law that strengthens the enforcement against drivers who use handheld electronic devices for activities such as texting while a vehicle is in motion. The legislation makes this action a primary traffic offense, giving law enforcement the power to stop drivers solely for engaging in this activity.

The Governor also announced today that he will increase the penalty for using a cellular phone without a hands-free device or a handheld device while driving from two to three points through changes in state regulations.

The law does not penalize drivers using a handheld electronic device that is affixed to a surface or using a GPS device that is attached to the vehicle. The law also exempts police officers, fire fighters, or emergency vehicle drivers while they are performing their duties. In addition, a driver is exempt from the law if the driver is communicating or attempting to communicate with law enforcement, the fire department, or medical personnel during an emergency situation.

July 16, 2011

NYSHA Animal Cruelty Investigation Manual

New York State Humane Association's manual, "How to Investigate Animal Cruelty in New York State - A Manual of Procedures" is a comprehensive document which includes chapters on how to be prepared ahead of time - before you actually receive a cruelty complaint, how to receive and investigate a complaint, examples covering many situations, all NYS laws pertinent to animals - annotated with explanations, case law relevant to animal cases, basic animal care standards, appendices containing forms to use in cruelty investigations, handouts on various animal care topics, and articles pertinent to various animal issues.

Sue McDonough, NYSHA President and Police Officer, provided technical input and expertise; Pat Valusek, NYSHA Vice-President and technical writer, researched supplementary material and additional examples, and wrote the text. Material was gathered from individuals who worked for various agencies, such as DA's offices, the Animal Rescue League of Boston, the ASPCA, SPCA with active cruelty investigation programs, state agencies such as the Dept. of Ag. & Mkts., and various police agencies.

The entire manual, HTML format -or- 8M PDF file, is now available online. Use the HTML option if you want to view/print specific sections of the manual. Use the PDF option to view a printer-friendly version of the manual in its entirety. Downloading may take a while, but, in Adobe Acrobat Reader, you'll then be able to save a copy of the file or to print the file.

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July 19, 2011

Six out of every ten users run vulnerable versions of Adobe Reader-AVAST

AVAST Software researchers have discovered that six out of every ten users of Adobe Reader are running unpatched versions of the program, leaving them vulnerable to a variety of malware attacks.

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"There is a basic assumption that people will automatically update or migrate to the newer version of any program. At least with Adobe Reader, this assumption is wrong - and it's exposing users to a wide range of potential threats," said Ondrej Vlcek, CTO at AVAST Software.

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Updates are the key security issue as the AVAST Virus Lab did not detect a causal link between specific versions of Adobe Reader and exposure to malware.

60 Apps in 60 Minutes 2011 - iPhone J.D.

One of the great traditions of ABA TECHSHOW is to have sessions with a title of 60 ____ in 60 Minutes. The final session of the conference is the very popular 60 Sites in 60 Minutes, and equally popular is the annual session 60 Tips in 60 Minutes. In that spirit, last week at TECHSHOW 2011, Reid Trautz, Josh Barrett and Jeff Richardson presented 60 Apps in 60 Minutes, a collection of notable apps for attorneys using an iPhone or an iPad.

July 20, 2011

The Internal Revenue Service is giving overseas banks an additional year before they will have to make any withholdings from U.S. customers who fail to disclose enough identifying information to U.S. tax collectors.The second round of IRS guidance issued today on the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, or FATCA, doesn't require banks to make 30 percent withholdings on non-compliant U.S. customers until Jan. 1, 2014. Other withholdings on gross proceeds and income that might be indirectly sourced to the U.S. won't start until Jan. 1, 2015.

The requirements, which Congress approved last year, were originally slated to take effect at the beginning of 2013. Today's announcement is intended to address the concerns of overseas financial institutions, including Toronto-Dominion Bank (TD) of Canada, Allianz SE (ALV) ofGermany and Aegon NV (AGN) of the Netherlands, which have said the proposal is too complex.

July 22, 2011

We disagree with Supreme Court's conclusion that, in the absence of any legislatively created mechanism in New York by which a court could grant the dissolution of a civil union entered into in another state, it was powerless to grant the requested relief. While plaintiff lacks a remedy at law, the dissolution of a civil union falls squarely within the scope of Supreme Court's broad equity jurisdiction.

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In other words, even in the absence of any direct grant of legislative power, Supreme Court has the "inherent authority...to fashion whatever remedies are required for the resolution of justiciable disputes and the protection of the rights of citizens," tempered only by our Constitution and statutes (Matter of AT&T Info. Sys. v. Donohue, 113 AD2d at 400 [internal quotation marks and citation omitted]).

July 26, 2011

NYLJ: Gay Marriage Opponents Attack New Law on Multiple Fronts

A non-profit group called New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedoms, backed by the Liberty Counsel, charged in a lawsuit filed yesterdaythat the law had been rammed through the state Senate on the night of June 24 in violation of the Open Meetings Law and the Senate's own rules.

"Constitutional liberties were violated. Today we are asking the court to intervene in its rightful role as the check and balance on an out-of-control State Legislature," said Reverend Jason J. McGuire, executive director of the group and a resident of upstate Livingston County, where New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedoms v. New York State Senate was filed.

A spokesman for Governor Andrew M. Cuomo said in a statement that "the plaintiffs lack a basic understanding of the laws of the state of New York. The suit is without merit."

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The 106 Best iPhone Apps

On this page, you will find the best 106 iPhone applications for all your needs. makeuseof.com has made the effort to categorize the apps and picked only those they believe to be the best ones and which will most likely be useful to you. (+) denotes Universal apps, which can run on both iPhones and iPads.

July 28, 2011

Experts: OS X now much more secure than rivals | MacNN

Consultants with several computer security firms say that Wednesday's release of Mac OS X Lion makes it "king of the jungle" in terms of mainstream operating system security, surging ahead of rivals such as Windows 7 and Ubuntu Linux with very signifiant security overhauls throughout the OS, reports The Register, including a robust implementation of ALSR, sandboxing of vulnerable processes, and locking down web interactions.

Want to protect yourself against this vulnerability? Passware says the security risk is easy to overcome by simply turning off the computer instead of putting it to sleep, and disabling the "Automatic Login" setting. This way, passwords will not be present in memory and cannot be recovered.

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July 30, 2011

Two-Year Limit No Longer Applies to Many Innocent Spouse Requests

Available only to someone who files a joint return, innocent spouse relief is designed to help a taxpayer who did not know and did not have reason to know that his or her spouse understated or underpaid an income tax liability. Publication 971, Innocent Spouse Relief, has more information about the program.

The change to the two-year limit is effective immediately, and details are in Notice 2011-70, posted today on IRS.gov.

Existing regulations, adopted in 2002, require that innocent spouse requests seeking equitable relief be filed within two years after the IRS first takes collection action against the requesting spouse. The time limit, adopted after a public hearing and public comment, was designed to encourage prompt resolution while evidence remained available. The IRS plans to issue regulations formally removing this time limit.

IRS Live presents The Fresh Start Initiative

The Internal Revenue Service presents an IRS Live webinar, The IRS Fresh Start Initiative, on Aug. 31, at 2 p.m. ET. The topic is "Learn about the IRS Fresh Start Initiative - Help for Struggling Taxpayers." This webinar will broadcast for 60 minutes. In the Aug. 31, broadcast, viewers will learn about helping individual and small business taxpayers get a Fresh Start with their tax liabilities including changes to Collection policy for:

Lien filing threshold

Lien withdrawals

Installment agreements

Offer in compromise

Viewers can register anytime before the program and download a calendar reminder. A certificate of completion will be offered for this webinar. Enrolled agents receive one CPE credit, and other tax professionals may receive credit if the broadcast meets their organization's or state's CPE requirements. The webinar will be available on demand on the IRS Video Portal one month after the live program airs.

July 31, 2011

31 Essential Google+ Resources--Mashable

Already using Google+? Follow Mashable's Pete Cashmore for the latest about the platform's new features, tips and tricks as well as social media and technology updates.

Google+ hit the news feeds like a strategic and popular ton of bricks. But we haven't stopped there. In addition to breaking news, Mashable has provided how-tos and tools for maximizing your Google+ experience. We've sourced reviews from some of the network's early adopters, and we've also welcomed your input as you navigate one of the most buzzworthy social outlets of the year.

WalkingOffice: Mobile Solutions for Legal Professionals

The iPad has officially found its way into the offices of Proskauer, a New York law firm.

Malcolm Collingwood, Senior Technology Strategist at Proskauer, said attorneys will be required to use GoodReader ($4.99) to annotate documents and DocsToGo Premium($16.99) to edit documents. Cloud apps are not used by the firm's attorneys, and it is too early to decide whether the firm will use Apple iCloud when it is released later this year.